It's hard to believe that it's been over a year now since Bill Hader's increasingly black comedy series Barry reached its jaw-slackening conclusion, the hitman series going out on a high having asserted Hader's status as one of the most exciting talents working in film and TV today. And now, after taking a break from Barry's increasingly bleak world to play Banana in John Krasinski's child-friendly cinematic confection IF, Hader's preparing his next HBO soon-to-be hit. Per Variety's reporting, the Tulsan multi-hyphenate is teaming up with his Barry co-writer Duffy Boudreau on a new comedy pilot for the network giant.
Details on the newly announced project are incredibly scarce at this stage, but we have at least been given a logline, which reads as follows: “A woman in a small town has a big secret revealed.” Who is the woman? Nobody knows. Where is the small town? Nobody knows. And what's the big secret? Well, for now at least, pretty much everything. And if we're being totally honest, even the designation of the new show as a comedy doesn't tell us a hell of a lot about the tone we'll be getting, because even by the brutal final chapters of Barry, folk were still trying to tell us it was a comedy.
Back when Empire spoke to Hader ahead of Barry Season 4's release last year, the former SNL alum told us that whilst acting had always been something he liked prior to making the show, "writing and directing were where my heart and soul was." It'll be interesting then to see whether the IT Chapter Two star appears in front of the camera at all with this new series, or if he'll continue to embrace his love for working behind the camera more exclusively here. All we know for now is that if Hader and Boudreau — the latter of whom has also done stellar work on Hit-Monkey and Big Mouth — are back in the writers' room together, we'll be seated for whatever comes out on the other side, because it's sure to be a killer.